MSI GT73VR Titan-017 Gaming Notebook Review

By Tech For Pennies

October 12, 2016

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Prepare to dish out a lot of money if gaming notebook is what you want. Those things are darn expensive because of the high-end components you will find inside. Naturally, these beasts should be able to run any game no matter the settings and resolution. Let’s see what is the case with MSI GT73VR Titan-017 – is it a honorable player computer or not?

Gaming performance

GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5) is the graphics engine here, belonging to the Nvidia’s latest batch of gaming cards. It’s actually faster than the older kingpin GTX 980 (~11500 vs 9700 points in G3D Mark tests), so expect some very smooth frames here – especially when you can’t get more than Full HD on this screen. Just any game you play on this rig will give +60FPS on ultra settings, with most averaging at around 100 frames per second.

Other components

MSI GT73VR Titan-017 has a brand new processor, the Intel Core i7-6820HK. This heavyweight unit features four cores, a high 2.7GHz base frequency and a respectable 3.6GHz turbo boost. It’s faster than pretty much any processor in a laptop (CPU Mark score ~9000), so you won’t get lag if you put your video editor hat on and use software like Adobe Premiere. Also remember there’s 16GB DDR4 memory (2x8GB) speeding things up, and you can put in more because the maximum RAM is 32GB.

Storage drives are two in this unit: a 1TB 7200RPM not-so-interesting hard drive and a smaller but quick 128GB solid-state drive attached to M.2 PCIe bus. Both drives can of course be upgraded, and this laptop also supports M.2 SATA 3 SSDs.

What ports and connections are available?

MSI GT73VR Titan-017 comes with many connectors, it’s quite a big notebook, see. There are a whopping five USB 3.0 ports available, and on top of that HDMI, miniDisplayPort and Thunderbolt 3 for video outputs.

Optical drive isn’t included here, so installing games from discs is only possible if you get an external DVD burner. Anyway, SD(HC/XC) card slot is available on the side.

Check out what other people are saying about this laptop on Amazon.com.

Other interesting features and benefits?

MSI GT73VR Titan-017 has a player-friendly display: the diagonal is large 17.3 inches, resolution acceptable 1920×1080, G-Sync enabled (yet not advertised) and refresh rate decent 120hz with 5ms response time. The display has anti-glare coating and no touch support. A Full HD webcam (1080p video at 60fps) is attached in the top bezel.

Even if the battery is beefy (8-cell 75Whr), the operating time of this rig won’t be too great. I’d be happy to get 1.5 hours out when gaming on battery, and 2-3 hours if surfing the web.

Full-color backlit keyboard is included.

Summary

Being one of the most expensive gaming laptops, you might be doubtful about MSI GT73VR Titan-017. But if you have the money, don’t worry. There’s just nothing it couldn’t do for a serious gamer, thanks to its GTX 1070 graphics, quad-core processor and solid-state drive. One thing to keep in mind is the resolution: Full HD is maximum, it won’t go beyond that. If you’re OK with this, then getting the MSI should be a noteworthy idea for a well-off player!